U.S. Department of EnergyOffice of Scientific and Technical Information
Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors CRADA Final Report
Abstract
The primary theme of this Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) project was refining the pre-alloyed powder processing approach (with alnico 8, modified for higher coercivity) of that came out of the previous Development of Radically Enhanced alnico Magnets (DREaM) project to permit full size net-shape alnico magnets to be produced in a reproducible manner that could allow testing in an advanced Permanent Magnet (PM) drive motor. Previously, a lack of sufficient coercivity in alnico magnets limits their energy product and their application in automotive traction drive motors, despite their high temperature stability. Use of enhanced sintered alnico magnets, instead of rare earth (RE) magnets or larger cast alnico magnets, could lower costs and decrease cooling needs of these motors. Conventional production of the best (aligned) alnico magnets (alnico 9) involves costly directional solidification (DS) and achieves good alignment, but modest energy product (10 MGOe), because of low coercivity. Other limitations of cast alnico 9 magnets are poor mechanical properties and difficulty in scaling special casting molds to mass production. In spite of these problems with alnico 9, a commercial electric motor company, UQM, developed a fully capable traction drive motor that met many 2022 DOE-VTO performance targets, except full speed operation,more »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (EE-3V)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1574906
- Report Number(s):
- CRADA-2017-01
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-07CH11358
- Resource Type:
- Technical Report
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Citation Formats
Anderson, Iver. Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors CRADA Final Report. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.2172/1574906.
Anderson, Iver. Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors CRADA Final Report. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1574906
Anderson, Iver. 2019.
"Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors CRADA Final Report". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1574906. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1574906.
@article{osti_1574906,
title = {Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors CRADA Final Report},
author = {Anderson, Iver},
abstractNote = {The primary theme of this Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) project was refining the pre-alloyed powder processing approach (with alnico 8, modified for higher coercivity) of that came out of the previous Development of Radically Enhanced alnico Magnets (DREaM) project to permit full size net-shape alnico magnets to be produced in a reproducible manner that could allow testing in an advanced Permanent Magnet (PM) drive motor. Previously, a lack of sufficient coercivity in alnico magnets limits their energy product and their application in automotive traction drive motors, despite their high temperature stability. Use of enhanced sintered alnico magnets, instead of rare earth (RE) magnets or larger cast alnico magnets, could lower costs and decrease cooling needs of these motors. Conventional production of the best (aligned) alnico magnets (alnico 9) involves costly directional solidification (DS) and achieves good alignment, but modest energy product (10 MGOe), because of low coercivity. Other limitations of cast alnico 9 magnets are poor mechanical properties and difficulty in scaling special casting molds to mass production. In spite of these problems with alnico 9, a commercial electric motor company, UQM, developed a fully capable traction drive motor that met many 2022 DOE-VTO performance targets, except full speed operation, due to brittle mechanical behavior. While UQM demonstrated an advanced drive motor that used alnico 9, they also encouraged the development of improved alnico, especially for greater coercivity (seeking 2X) and improved mechanical properties. While commercial sintered alnico magnets are less brittle and have improved coercivity, they have an inferior energy product due to their non-aligned, fine-grained microstructure. Thus, full development and up-scaling of well-aligned alnico magnets with a further increase in coercivity and good mechanical properties by a low cost powder processing route became the theme of this TCF project. The processing route for this project involved high-pressure gas atomization, at Ames and Carpenter, of modified alnico 8 compositions, compression molding of the resulting pre-alloyed powders into bulk samples, de-binding and sintering the samples to full density, and a final magneto-thermal treatment of the resulting bulk magnets, at Ames and Arnold Magnetic Technologies, to produce aligned magnets, which were intended for motor testing at UQM and Ford.},
doi = {10.2172/1574906},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1574906},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {11}
}
Works referenced in this record:
Compression Molding and Novel Sintering Treatments for Alnico Type-8 Permanent Magnets in Near-Final Shape with Preferred Orientation
journal, July 2017
- Kassen, Aaron G.; White, Emma M. H.; Tang, Wei
- JOM, Vol. 69, Issue 9